After giving her about an hour I packed up my stuff and walked over to the spot where she was at the shot. I had seen blood shoot from the impact wound as she took her first hard leap away. And yes, the impact on that rib made her run hard and low. She was moving as fast as a deer could move. She ran a few yards to the edge of the corn field and headed down a fence line. Bright red blood was absolutely everywhere, on the ground, the standing corn to her right and the fence to her left. I followed the blood standing upright with no need to bend over. It was now dark and I could see the shiny blood up to 10 yards ahead of me with my headlamp. I'll have to say, with the amount of blood coming out from both sides of her, I was now sure I had 2 lungs hit.
So, I continue to follow the trail, the blood remains constant, but after 100 or so yards I'm now just finding it on the ground in 50 cent size splashes and speckles. I'm to the point I'm starting to look ahead expecting her to be laying dead. On I go with the trail and before I know it I'm following her down into THE timber drainage from hell. Rose bushes and deadfalls that are nearly impenetrable. I continue on winding through all this stuff following blood. I remember thinking continually, OK she's gonna be just a few yards ahead. Before I knew it I was close to a 1/4 mi. away from the shot. No indication she bedded down or even stopped for more than a brief period. I'm now pretty sure I didn't get both lungs.
Well, with the amount of blood on the ground I just could not imagine the deer had went this far and it drove me to continue. Though the shot must not have been both lungs I felt she was gonna run out of juice pretty quick.
I followed blood out of the drainage up a bluff like hill, between rock outcrops with billy goat steepness. She made it to the top, went under a fence into a pasture. Still finding fifty cent size blood spashes I followed her up into the pasture where I finally lost blood. At this point I was close to half a mile from the shot in a wide open grazed pasture!
Frustrated and not having any real good lay of the land to lead me in a probable direction, I backed out with a very cold night in the forcast.
I grabbed my best friend in the morning and headed back to the last blood. She had went probably 60 yards without bleeding and we picked up good blood along the opposite pasture fenceline. Another couple hundred yards and my friend hollered at me.
Said and done this old doe gave me my monies worth. Looking at an aireal map of the location, she went close to 3/4 of a mile before running out of juice.
I'm sure glad I had good blood on the ground, not sure I would have ever found her without it.
Topic: Shot placement/recovery...w/photos (Read 9106 times)
